General Session with Chai Feldblum & Victoria Lipnic of the EEOC

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Commissioners Chai Feldblum and Victoria Lipnic of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) will discuss the agency’s new Strategic Enforcement Plan, and review its latest policy developments and other plans.

Chai Feldblum began her service as a Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April 2010. She was confirmed by the Senate for a second term, which will end on July 1, 2018.

During Commissioner Feldblum's service on the Commission, she has focused on all the employment civil rights issues within the jurisdiction of the EEOC. She has focused in particular on the employment of people with disabilities, pregnancy accommodation, sexual orientation and transgender discrimination, harassment prevention, the structure and process of the federal sector complaint system and strategic planning for the Commission.

Prior to her appointment to the EEOC, Commissioner Feldblum was a Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. She founded the Law Center's Federal Legislation and Administrative Clinic, which represented a range of organizational clients focused on social justice. She also founded Workplace Flexibility 2010, a policy enterprise focused on finding common ground between employers and employees on workplace flexibility issues.
Commissioner Feldblum played a leading role in helping to draft and negotiate the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the ADA Amendments Act of 2008. She has also worked to advance lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights and was one of the drafters of the original Employment Nondiscrimination Act.

Commissioner Feldblum is the first openly lesbian Commissioner of the EEOC and is the fourth person with a disability to serve on the Commission.

Commissioner Feldblum clerked for Judge Frank Coffin of the First Circuit Court of Appeals and for Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun after receiving her J.D. from Harvard Law School. She received her B.A. degree from Barnard College.

Victoria A. Lipnic was named Acting Chair of EEOC on January 25, 2017 by President Trump. Commissioner Lipnic has served on the EEOC since 2010, having been nominated to serve by President Barack Obama, and confirmed by the Senate, initially for a term ending on July 1, 2015. President Obama nominated her to serve a second term ending on July 1, 2020, and she was confirmed by the Senate on November 19, 2015. Immediately before coming to the EEOC, Commissioner Lipnic was of counsel to the law firm of Seyfarth Shaw LLP in its Washington, DC, office.

Commissioner Lipnic brings to the EEOC a breadth of experience working with federal labor and employment laws, most recently as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment Standards, a position she held from 2002 until 2009. In that position, she oversaw the Wage and Hour Division, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the Office of Workers' Compensation Programs, and the Office of Labor Management Standards. Under her tenure, the Wage and Hour Division revised regulations regarding overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act, reissued regulations under the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs issued new guidance and regulations for evaluating compensation discrimination.

In addition to her work with the Department of Labor, Commissioner Lipnic's government experience includes service as Workforce Policy Counsel to the then-Majority (Republican) members of the Committee on Education and the Workforce in the U.S. House of Representatives. Before her work for Congress, Commissioner Lipnic acted as in-house counsel for labor and employment matters to the U.S. Postal Service for six years. She also served as a special assistant for business liaison to the then U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Malcolm Baldrige.

A native of Carrolltown, Penn., where her late father was a teacher and long-serving mayor, Commissioner Lipnic earned a B.A. degree in Political Science and History from Allegheny College and a J.D. degree from George Mason University School of Law.